1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of project management, and more particularly to managing intents within a maintenance project.
2. Description of the Related Art
As projects have become more complex, project maintenance has become a difficult task, particularly for large projects involving multiple parties. In some situations, multiple parties jointly own tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and must coordinate repairs.
One particularly problematic example of such a complex task is the installation and/or maintenance of telecommunications equipment and power distribution equipment co-located on assets, such as the telephone poles and the like, jointly owned by a telecommunications company and a power distribution company (or another utility company). A similar problem arises when a telecommunications company needs to install and/or maintain telecommunications equipment pole owned by the power distribution company. Other examples of assets may include building structures and manholes. In any of these situations, a first party, e.g. the telecommunications company may issue an “intent,” or a formal request, to a second party. For example, a power distribution company, notifying that telecommunications company requires installation and/or maintenance of certain specific equipment. Intents may be described as techniques for communicating work to be performed, such as pole work, between joint owners, e.g. a utility company and a telecommunications company.
Given the very large number (sometimes thousand) of telephone poles that may need to be maintained, or on which equipment needs to be installed, the number of intents can be quite large. The power distribution company may respond promptly to an intent, or a significant period of time may elapse before the power distribution company responds to a particular intent. Accordingly, the telecommunications company faces a daunting task of keeping track of pending intents.
In one aspect, intents are traditionally generated in response to a “project.” A project, such as installing or upgrading a telecommunications cable from one city to another, may require generating hundreds of jobs, each job resulting in multiple intents, one intent for each telephone pole associated with the jobs. Traditionally, therefore, the telecommunications company has created a spreadsheet listing all of the intents. The spreadsheet may contain a table, each row of which corresponds to an intent that may correspond to hundreds of telephone poles. The row contains fields that describe the intent pertaining to the telephone poles. Date the intent was generated, when it was accepted by the power distribution company, and when the work on the telephone pole was completed are among the data listed in the row fields.
If a particular project requires modifications to telecommunications equipment mounted on several hundred telephone poles, the spreadsheet corresponding to that project may have several hundred lines, each line being used to keep track of a distinct intent. Each line of the spreadsheet may correspond to a pending intent that that has been communicated from the telecommunications company to the power distribution company.
The large number of intents that may be pending presents a complex tracking and management problem for the telecommunications company. If the power distribution company indicates that work on a particular telephone pole has been acknowledged, the telecommunications company might have to sift through a very large spreadsheet having a large number of intents to find the ones that refer to the particular telephone pole or an asset. Also, the telecommunications company may have issued multiple intents for a particular telephone pole, since the telephone pole may be operative to support many telecommunications cables. Overlooking an intent may require the telecommunications company to re-issue the intent.
A joint pole database has not solved the problem. Although the telecommunications company can access the joint pole database, intents have not been recorded in the joint pole database. Even if intents were included in the spreadsheets, combining all of the spreadsheets into a single computer-readable file would have to be an ongoing process for the computer-readable file to include all of the intents.
Therefore, there is a need for a database solution that allows substantially real time tracking and managing the very large number of intents associated with the field assets that may be jointly owned by different organizations.